'American Life' works out just fine on Showtime

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Mary in the Desert in This American Life (episode 204-God's Close-Up) - Photo: Jamie Trueblood/Showtime - Photo ID: thisamericanlife_204_0277

Mary in the Desert in This American Life (episode 204-God's Close-Up) - Photo: Jamie Trueblood/Showtime - Photo ID: thisamericanlife_204_0277

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'American Life' works out just fine on Showtime

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This American Life: 10:30 p.m. Thursdays on Showtime.

The first thing fans of the public radio series "This American Life" must have thought, when hearing there would be a TV version of same for Showtime, was "Don't screw it up." It's a logical extension, not just for radio fans, but definitely for highbrow public radio listeners and particularly for loyalists of "TAL," as the show is often referred to in shorthand.

There is a particular kind of love for "This American Life" that goes beyond cult status (it pulls in 1.7 million listeners a week, so it's a hit). There's a literary nature to host Ira Glass' storytelling -- both the radio and TV show essentially revolve around him interviewing people and illustrating a story in their life that is either remarkable or absorbing in some way.

For example, one episode is about a hip young Mormon painter in Utah who photographs men in beards to use as biblical figures, including Jesus. His favorite model is a young man whose girlfriend has essentially left the Mormon church, partly because her father is pushing the religion so hard. It's difficult to have her boyfriend appear in the art pieces, but in a strange way it has brought her father and her boyfriend closer together.

Those kinds of quirky stories, along with Glass' familiar narration, leave an imprint in listeners' minds. Wouldn't those stories, told thoughtfully, be diluted in a TV show? Would they lose their mystique, ruining really inspired, thoughtful work? Television does that all the time.

And yet, it may surprise those die-hard fans of "TAL" to know that upon hearing that the radio show would be made into a television series, TV critics everywhere probably thought, "Wonderful -- boring low-tech talk you have to pay for." Making good television -- worthy of doling out for it, certainly -- is something too many people think they can achieve with little or no effort.

The bad in both scenarios never happened. (The Mormon painter story is richly detailed, for example.) Happily, everybody wins.

The television version of "This American Life" does not ruin the fragile, hip beauty of the radio version. Glass and the team responsible for adding pictures to words have created a compelling television series. It may have been a miracle on both ends.

The first four (of six) episodes of "This American Life" are an exceptional mix of skilled storytelling with a beautiful, artlike visual palette -- saturated colors and still cameras that seem to be lovingly applied to the top-notch, intimate interviewing techniques that "This American Life" is identified with.

If you're unfamiliar with the radio series, it doesn't matter (other than you're missing out on a real aural pleasure). "This American Life" will seem like a small oddity, a show about real people without the eat-your-vegetables price of admission that a documentary often demands. It looks different from a typical TV show -- more static, more introspective. And then there's Glass, who must look -- for those who have never seen him -- like a nerdier Rod Serling: a man in a neat suit and tie with large, black-framed glasses, dropped into their bastard machine, introducing real stories of real people from behind an allegoric desk, abstractly positioned on the side of the road, in a parking garage or in the middle of the desert.

What is he up to? What is this show trying to say? What is it? "This American Life" doesn't look much like anything you've seen. It can't be easily categorized. And that's a good start.

For those already familiar with Glass, he seems almost more suited for television than radio, where his vocal pattern -- low-key, short blurts -- seems antithetical to the deep radio pipes that we so frequently hear (and that sound phony). On television, a bit of the quirk in Glass is readily evident. The suit and glasses thing, with the clipped tones, makes you lean in, as if he's some late-night talk show host on a new, infinitely cooler channel than what the networks are offering.

The payoff, as "TAL" fans know, comes after the introduction. The radio series has natural sound, audible breathing, unedited background noises, long pauses and thoughtful responses instead of sound bites. The same thing happens on television, and the result is something less than a documentary but far removed from a cheap (in all ways) reality show. There's a gimmickless beauty to the show, even though the visual style of Glass behind a desk in some randomly framed shots could be construed as a gimmick. But that's just TV. Viewers need a visual context.

Though radio fans will find the familiar "Act 1, Act 2" setup, Glass often veers away from it. For example, a shorter story often kicks off an episode, fleshed out with animation or some re-creation, followed by two full stories. Or, just to be different, whole episodes dedicated to one theme (Episode 3, about a documentary filmmaker undertaking a kind of video retribution against his stepfather, is riveting). There's enough variation right from the start to keep "TAL" fresh. What also helps -- in addition to the visual panache -- is atmospheric music.

Ultimately, as all "This American Life" fans know, the key to success is selecting (and then telling) a good story (essays on God, on rogue improv groups, on people who willingly share their childhood embarrassments, etc.). No story is too small if told well, as Glass (and Charles Kuralt before him) knows. Illuminating those stories on Showtime in a way that doesn't steal their intimacy or reduce their depth was the real crossover challenge. That Glass and his colleagues pull this off with a kind of public radio-approved effective minimalism will no doubt calm the fears of loyalists.

"This American Life" and Glass have crossed over to the dark side rather effortlessly, with no loss of decorum or quality. And in the process, they have given Showtime another valuable franchise in a stable that is rapidly filling.

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